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Scotch Woodcock (Make a cup of white sauce add)
Make a cup of white sauce; add one tablespoonful of essence of anchovies and five hard-boiled eggs cut into quarters lengthwise. 5 eggs.
1 cup of milk.
Eggs à la Italienne.
INGREDIENTS. ½ a cup of boiled spaghetti, chopped.
1 tablespoonful of butter. 1/2 a cup of fresh mushrooms, sliced.
1 teaspoonful of chopped parsley.
1 scant teaspoonful of salt.
White pepper.
Method. Melt the butter in the blazer and sauté in it the sliced mushrooms; add the milk and spaghetti, and, when heated thoroughly, put the blazer in the bath and add the beaten eggs.
Stir and cook until the eggs have thickened; then add the parsley and seasoning, and serve at once.
Eggs à la Parisienne.
Butter thickly the inner sides of as many dariole moulds as there are individuals to serve.
The page as printed runs three chafing-dish egg recipes together; the Scotch woodcock proper ends with the ingredient list of five eggs and a cup of milk, after which the text slides into Eggs à la Italienne and the opening line of Eggs à la Parisienne. Read the first two sentences as the recipe and the rest as strays.
- The typographyThe capital "I" throughout these lists is a broken figure 1. Read "I cup of milk" and "I tablespoonful of butter" as one cup and one tablespoon.
- White sauceA cup of white sauce here means a thin béchamel: about 1 tablespoon each butter and flour cooked together, then a cup of milk whisked in and simmered until it coats a spoon. The cup of milk printed on the page is probably the sauce liquid rather than an addition to it, though the lists are jumbled enough that it may belong to the recipe that follows.
- Essence of anchoviesA Victorian bottled anchovy extract, thinner and saltier than modern paste. Use about 2 teaspoons of anchovy paste, or four or five oil-packed fillets mashed smooth, and hold back the salt until you have tasted.
- Blazer and bathThe blazer is the top pan of the chafing dish, used directly over the flame; the bath is the water-filled underpan that turns it into a double boiler. Make the sauce over direct heat, then move to the bath before the eggs go in so nothing curdles or breaks.
- The hingeFold the quartered eggs in off the flame and only long enough to warm through. Held over heat in a salted sauce the yolks go chalky and the whites squeak.
- Serve it on toastThe recipe omits what most versions of the dish assume: fingers or triangles of hot buttered toast, spread with a little more of the anchovy essence, with the egg mixture spooned over.
- YieldFive eggs and a cup of sauce serves about four as a savoury or two or three as a light supper dish. The white pepper printed on this page belongs to the ingredient list of Eggs à la Italienne, not to the woodcock.
- The stray recipesEggs à la Italienne wants roughly half a cup each of chopped cooked spaghetti and sliced mushrooms, a scant teaspoon of salt and white pepper; the printed list gives no quantity for eggs or milk, and the '5 eggs. I cup of milk' above may belong here rather than to the woodcock. Dariole moulds, for the Parisienne version, are small deep metal moulds, straight or slightly tapered; 4 oz ramekins stand in.
Scotch woodcock belongs to the English savoury course, the small hot salted dish served after the sweet at dinner or in gentlemen's clubs, and the name is a joke of the same family as Welsh rabbit: no woodcock, the anchovy and rich egg standing in for the flavour of a small game bird eaten trail and all. Bottled anchovy essence, on sale well before 1800, made the dish trivially easy. Its appearance in a chafing-dish book is telling of the period around 1900, when the alcohol-burning chafing dish was fashionable equipment for late suppers, card parties and rooms without a kitchen; savouries that cooked in one pan in a few minutes were exactly what it was bought for.